Electrum wallet JSON – get WIFs or hex private keys

Electrum wallet files do not store raw private keys or WIFs. Once you decrypt the JSON you will only see the seed or the xprv. All individual keys are derived on the fly by Electrum, so the simplest way to dump them is to let Electrum itself handle the derivation through its CLI.

The script below starts an Electrum daemon in the current directory, loops over all wallet files, unlocks each one, and prints all private keys (WIF) to stdout:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

ELECTRUM="$HOME/.local/bin/electrum"

read -s -p "Wallet password: " WALLET_PASS
echo

"$ELECTRUM" --version --offline
"$ELECTRUM" stop 2>/dev/null || true
"$ELECTRUM" daemon -d -D .

for file in ./*; do
    [ -f "$file" ] || continue

    echo "Using wallet: $file"

    "$ELECTRUM" load_wallet -w "$file" -D . --password "$WALLET_PASS"
    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "ERROR loading wallet $file"
        continue
    fi

    "$ELECTRUM" unlock -w "$file" -D . --password "$WALLET_PASS"

    "$ELECTRUM" listaddresses -w "$file" -D . \
    | "$ELECTRUM" getprivatekeys - -D . -w "$file" \
    | jq -r '.[]'

    "$ELECTRUM" close_wallet -w "$file" -D .
done 2>/dev/null

"$ELECTRUM" stop